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Some Consequences 
of Neutrality 



By 

Arthur Stanwood Pier 



Reprinted by request from the Boston Transcript of 
December 15th, 1915 



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Some Consequences of 
Neutrality 

MANY Americans believe that the attitude of neutrality is 
intrinsically virtuous. It implies to them an open and im- 
partial mind, a judicial habit of thought, a desire to be 
scrupulously fair to everybody. According to this theory, to be neu- 
tral is to be clothed with judicial authority and to be free from the 
necessity of haste in rendering a decision. If it suits the judge's con- 
venience, he need not render it until after the war. The worshipers 
of neutrality as the twin sister of justice deplore unneutral utter- 
ances as immoral and dangerous. They cannot see what reason the 
United States has to take sides in a European quarrel. They hold 
tenaciously to the conviction that through the policy of neutrality this 
nation will render a great service to mankind. 

But the vital question for Americans is not what will neutrality 
enable them to do for the world, but what is neutrality doing to them. 

Neutrality is not a moral principle. It is an attitude adopted 
simply and solely for purposes of security and convenience. When 
we take action to uphold the rights of neutrals, it is for the protection 
of our selfish interests that we curb the extra-legal acts which one 
or the other belligerent finds convenient or desirable. Neutrality may 
be a moral attitude or an immoral attitude. It all depends on the 
nature of the quarrel and the motives that might urge the neutral to 
join in it. Self-interest in the sense of self-aggrandizement would be 
an immoral motive for abandoning neutrality; self-interest in the 
sense of self-preservation would make it a moral duty to cast aside 
neutrality. Chivalrous feeling is seldom strong enough to urge a neu- 
tral into war. It caused the United States to take sides with the 
Cuban revolutionists against the tyranny of Spain. It has not caused 
the United States to join in the defense of Belgium against German 
aggression, or even to protest against German aggression. The appeal 

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to our chivalry was certainly no greater in the case of Cuba than in 
the case of Belgium. It might be strictly logical to say that if our 
belligerent attitude towards Spain in 1 898 was a moral attitude, our 
neutral attitude towards Germany in 1915 is an immoral attitude. 
But there are shadings in morality. Perhaps we should define the 
difference more justly if we said that the morals of this nation in 
1898 were those of the inflamed idealist, and in 1915 those of the 
calculating materialist. 

Now the man who is fairly to be characterized as a calculating 
materialist never has rendered and never will render any important 
service to humanity. He may have the most excellent ideas for the 
improvement of the world, but the fact that it is he who presents 
them makes them odious and to be rejected. France and England, 
whose sons have perished in defense of an ideal that was America's 
as well as theirs to maintain, will not be likely to turn a favoring ear 
to whatever words of neutral wisdom we may utter at the end of the 
war. The fact that it is we who utter them will make them unctuous 
and revolting. The wise course for the calculating materialist is to be 
as quiet as possible and safeguard his wealth as best he can for the 
next generation. A dim perception of this truth, an uneasy feeling 
that at the end of the war this republic will be less admired and more 
distrusted than ever before in its history, has aided and accelerated 
the agitation for preparedness. 

Will it not be unfortunate for mankind if a prejudice against us 
because we have harvested profits while our friends and champions 
have been shedding blood deprives the world of the benefit of our wise 
counsel — the wiser since it was conceived in circumstances, compara- 
tively speaking, of philosophic calm? An American writing from 
Paris says: "I am told quite seriously that we in Europe are too 
near to judge properly what is going on here; that we cannot have 
the necessary perspective. But where America and the Administra- 
tion's policy are concerned, we are too far away to understand ! 
Apparently 'perspective' is of no value to us, and distance is no ob- 
stacle to the national intelligence ! My sister (in America) quotes a 
friend of hers as saying that an American who recently went home 
misjudged the situation altogether until he 'shook off the European 

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atmosphere.' In other words, our complacent fellow-countrymen, by 
some freak of geography and logic, are the only people in the world 
who are competent to decide anything. Of course, they make the 
matter easier by leaving out all question of right and wrong." The 
tone of the letter is bitter; it may be unfortunate, but it will not be 
unnatural if nations whose experiences give rise to such bitterness 
of feeling refuse the healing lotions which after the war we shall be 
so ready to apply. 

Indeed, it is highly improbable that at the end of the war we shall 
command an audience of respectful nations. And what sort of a 
nation shall we be at the end of the war? What sort of a nation are 
we now? How have we developed or degenerated since August 1, 
1914? What is likely to be the course of our development or degen- 
eration in the immediate future? 

The constant and enforced inhibition of a natural impulse tends 
to promote ill temper, crabbedness, nervous strain, restlessness, and 
morbidness. In some cases enforced inhibition produces the partial 
or complete atrophy of the impulse. Mr. Graham Wallas describes in 
his book, "The Great Society," the evil effects of what he calls 
"balked disposition." The United States is suffering as a nation from 
inhibited impulse and balked disposition, and presents in its body 
symptomatic manifestations analogous to those that may be observed 
in an individual who is under similar disability. 

The two emotions which most sharply distinguish civilized man 
from primitive man are pity and indignation. The more highly 
civilized the state of society, the greater is the national capacity for 
pity and indignation and the more urgent the impulse towards ex- 
pression when some great catastrophe occurs or some monstrous 
crime is committed. Yet when the greatest catastrophe the world ever 
knew occurred, when the most monstrous crime in all history was com- 
mitted, this civilized nation expressed as a nation neither compassion 
for the victims nor indignation against the assassins. There was no 
evidence that its sensibilities were affronted when Belgium was 
invaded, peaceful citizens slain, villages burned, and women raped. 
Individuals could not refrain from expressing their abhorrence, but 
the Government, if it was moved, did not move ; nor when the 

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$40,000,000 tax was imposed on Brussels, nor when the first death- 
dealing Zeppelin dropped its bombs on Antwerp at midnight, nor 
when a battle fleet bombarded the open towns of Scarborough and 
Whitby, and slew a hundred women and children. Although these 
things were done by Germany in direct violation of the laws of war, 
and in violence to every instinct of common humanity, the Amer- 
ican Government smothered what must have been its impulse to pro- 
test. Finally came the sinking of the Lusitania; then the silence 
was broken. In the series of notes that followed our Government 
announced that the cause for which it contended was no less high 
and sacred than that of humanity itself. Its declaration contrasts 
strangely with its acts. The Government has been scrupulously care- 
ful to protest only when American lives have been jeopardized or lost; 
the sinking by German submarines of steamers that carried only Nor- 
wegians or Danes or Italians has elicited no expression of disapproval 
at Washington. The barbarous execution of Miss Cavell, that stirred 
the anger of America, drew no word from Washington. 

When pity for the victims of aggression does not lead to inter- 
vention in behalf of others who are clearly doomed to be the vic- 
tims of similar aggression, and when indignation against murderers, 
pirates, and outlaws is not followed by any effort to curb the criminal 
activities of such persons, the state which so flagrantly inhibits its 
best impulses must necessarily suffer the consequences of balked dis- 
position. What these are it requires no specialist in national pathol- 
ogy to point out today. When worthy impulse is not translated into 
still more worthy act, the moral fiber is inevitably weakened. If there 
is a continuing chain of events, each of which rouses the same emo- 
tions of pity and of indignation and each of which is succeeded by 
inaction, not merely is the moral fiber weakened, but the soul grows 
callous. Tragedies such as those which first filled the national imagi- 
nation with horror now have little power to affect it. Contrast the 
effect upon our startled, incredulous minds of the first Zeppelin bom- 
bardment of Antwerp with the passive disgust created by the last 
and far more destructive raid on London. Contrast the appeal made 
to the American imagination and compassion by the plight of Belgium 
a year ago and that made by the plight of Serbia today. The Amer- 

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ican people are richer than they were a year ago, but they are not 
giving so freely to the relief of war sufferers, though these have 
increased appallingly in numbers. American individuals have grown 
tired of doling out charity to people who might have been spared the 
need of charity if the American Government had not inhibited its 
noblest impulses, and become the melancholy victim of balked disposi- 
tion. "I don't let myself think any more about the war, and I read 
very little about it," a highly intelligent woman said to me. " It does 
no good, and it's very distressing. I think and read about other 
things." Perhaps this is the sensible course to pursue under a gov- 
ernment which says in effect: "The Germans and their allies have, as 
we know, brutally put to death, in violation of the laws of war, men 
and women and children in Belgium and France and England and 
Serbia, and they will no doubt put others to death. We should like 
to save these people, but we are neutral, and so we must not utter one 
word of protest — unless, of course, the Germans carelessly kill an 
American. Armenia? Yes, we did venture to raise a slight, a very 
mild, protest over Armenia, but then, Armenia had always been our 
favorite humanitarian field, and we hoped that for this reason our 
expression of concern for the fate of those poor people would give no 
offense at Berlin." 

The determined preservation of neutrality in the face of repeated 
insult and injury has, of course, encouraged the seditious undertak- 
ings of German sympathizers and emissaries. Their belief that we 
will not deviate from our officially neutral attitude, no matter what 
provocation is given us, has led them to plot and conspire with an un- 
precedented audacity. Bomb outrages, incendiary fires, the foment- 
ing of strikes and industrial disorders, are merely the skin humors of 
the patient suffering from balked disposition. They are symptoms of 
the disease rather than the worst or most dangerous feature of it. 
They signify that forces of disintegration are at work in the body, 
and that the cohesion and unity of the nation are being undermined 
and imperiled. The attempt to ally Irish-Americans and German- 
Americans for political purposes, the utterances of leaders of the 
National German Alliance, the violent anti-Americanism of The 
Fatherland and of some German newspapers published in this coun- 

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try. the expenditure of great sums of money to influence public opin- 
ion, and the network of German intrigue and espionage in which 
there is no possible reason to doubt that we are enmeshed, have cre- 
ated a situation of internal rancor and bitterness, and one full of the 
most evil possibilities. Because of the official attitude of neutrality, 
the drastic measures that alone are likely to purge a sick nation art- 
not applied. The disorganizing activities of German spies and con- 
spirators will not be effectually curbed and the vicious propaganda 
silenced so long as we regard Germany as a friendly Power and so 
long as surreptitious effort in behalf of Germany is not constructive 
treason to the United States. 

More insidious in its effects than German plotting and spying has 
been the gradual disappearance in the mind of the ordinary citizen, 
so far as relates to this war, of fundamental distinctions between 
right and wrong. The lulling and dulling of the American conscience 
has been the inevitable consequence of neutrality. Admiration of Ger- 
man military efficiency and success and of German unity and sacrifice 
has gradually eliminated from many minds the horror that the brutal 
unscrupulousness of German militarism had inspired. If German 
conquest of Europe implied no threat to America, many Americans 
who were shocked by the overrunning of Belgium would soon grow 
reconciled to such conquest. Success, if it is vast enough, always wins 
the deference of the multitude and usually that of the historian. 

It is not only that the brilliancy of Germany's military achieve- 
ments has dazzled eyes that first were horrified by her iniquity. In 
such a conflict as has raged it was inevitable that both belligerents 
should infringe the rights of neutrals. Great Britain's imposition of 
burdensome and obnoxious restrictions on our commerce has oper- 
ated to reduce American sympathy for the allied cause, and has 
enabled the industrious German propagandists to win an increasingly 
indulgent hearing. Original issues, the distinction between a war 
waged deliberately, with purpose of aggression and aggrandizement, 
and war waged of necessity in defense of libert}' and life, have been 
clouded in minds that were once disposed to see clearly. There is no 
doubt that the hearts of the American people are still with the Allies, 
but they are not passionately with them as in the beginning. If Eng- 

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land were standing alone against Germany, with the same right on 
her side that exists today, a great number of our people would be 
indifferent to the outcome. France has our sympathy and admiration 
far more than England; yet if Germany had not been so stupidly 
persistent in enforcing her policy of frightfulness, our sympathetic 
admiration for France would by this time have been hardly greater 
than our respectful admiration for Germany. 

The truth is, the ordinary citizen, in matters which do not imme- 
diately affect his own interest, does not reason closely. He thinks 
that Belgium should not have been invaded, but he remembers that 
Great Britain has in the past abused small nations ; and without know- 
ing much about Russia, he is inclined to distrust her thoroughly. The 
German-Americans of his acquaintance have been good citizens, and 
he believes that the German people are a great people. These preju- 
dices and prepossessions, combined with what he reads in the news- 
papers about England's high-handed treatment of American shipping, 
influence him, in spite of all the revolting inhumanity of the Germans, 
to believe that there may be right on both sides as well as wrong on 
both sides. His government's way of dealing with the situation tends 
to confirm him in this confusion. In order to preserve the even- 
handed justice of the neutral, the Government sends a sharp note to 
this belligerent, a stiff note to that. The grievances of the United 
States are infinitely greater against Germany than against England, 
but the notes addressed by the Administration to the governments of 
those countries have not adequately expressed a sense of the relative 
values. The ordinary citizen, accustomed to let the Administration 
do his thinking for him where foreign relations are concerned, is led 
by the Administration's remonstrances to the English Government to 
feel resentment against England as a rude and disagreeable neighbor, 
instead of gratitude to England as a champion of the American ideal 
of liberty. "Champion of the American ideal of liberty!" exclaims 
the ordinary citizen. "Not at all! Why, if you will look up Presi- 
dent Wilson's third note to Germany on the subject of the Lusitania 
you will find he commends Germany for striving like us for the free- 
dom of the seas." Yes, it is perfectly true. At that most inappropriate 
time the Administration did formally record that most amazing dis- 

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covery. Is there anywhere a sadder illustration of the demoralizing 
influence of neutrality when to maintain neutrality means to balk the 
disposition ? 

There has arisen confusion in the American mind as to whether 
England is not waging as inhuman warfare as Germany. American 
annoyance over the interference with American commerce has taken 
on in many cases the warmth of moral indignation because the illegal 
blockade aims to starve Germany into submission. It is one thing for 
armies to fight and kill each other, but to try to win a war by starving 
a nation's women and children ! Many a person originally sympa- 
thetic with the Allies feels that it is just as barbarous for England 
to adopt such methods as it was for Germany to sink the Lusitania. 
Is it not, however, a curiously confused mind that discovers an equal 
degree of moral guilt in England's effort and in Germany's achieve- 
ment? England is trying to starve Germany into submission, but 
Germany has the option of escaping starvation by withdrawing its 
armies from countries in which they have no business to be, and ren- 
dering such reparation as is possible for having wickedly and wan- 
tonly provoked the war. What chance for escape was given to the 
women and the babies on the Lusitania? 

If such confusion of mind can exist in regard to specific issues 
immediately touching the heart of America, it is not to be wondered 
at that on the general question of the proper treatment to be accorded 
b}' the national Government to the world's great outlaw, the failure 
of decisive leadership should have brought about the befuddlement of 
the American conscience and the obfuscation of the American intelli- 
gence. Mr. Henry Ford's ill-considered humanitarian enterprise, Mr. 
Bryan's peace-at-any-price pleadings, Mr. Wanamaker's maudlin 
proposal that the United States buy the independence of Belgium 
from Germany, the appeals, partly disingenuous, partly sentimental, 
that have been raised in Congress and out of it for an embargo on 
the export of munitions, show in what a maze of good intentions and 
utter misapprehension Americans are wandering. In their attitude 
towards the war our people are of three classes : the real neutrals, 
who are and have always been as indifferent to its course as if it were 
taking place on the planet Mars ; those who, having once held strong 

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hopes and earnest desires, now are condemned to feel a gnawing and 
bitter humiliation; and those who are actively working and agitating 
for the immediate cessation of the war, even though Germany would 
then be left in full enjoyment of her plunder. This last class, com- 
posed of German sympathizers and of well-meaning, soft-hearted 
people who wish to avert further bloodshed, is mischievous ; its activi- 
ties increase disrespect for this country among the nations of the 
Quadruple Entente, and perform a kind of inverted missionary work 
at home. For they seek to bring moral pressure and any other avail- 
able pressure to bear against the nations that are fighting for their 
independence and struggling to restore the liberties of their enslaved 
citizens. In the name of humanity, these pacifists are trying to rally 
the moral support of this nation to the greatest foe of humanity that 
the world has ever known. That the effort is destined to fail does not 
make it in its domestic effects any less harmful. It debases the moral 
sense of our people. If the time should come when the tottering 
Hohenzollern appeals for peace through the agency of American 
peace missionaries, hoping with their aid to retain some shred of his 
conquests, and the Allied nations refuse to give him peace, an influen- 
tial body of opinion will have been prepared in this country to 
denounce the vindictiveness of France and England and Russia, and 
to forward its sympathy to the Kaiser and to Prussian Junkerdom. 

Our mental obliquity and moral deterioration must be ascribed 
directly to the resolution with which our Government has maintained 
and enforced a policy of neutrality in a conflict between elemental 
right and elemental wrong. Baffled impulse, balked disposition, have 
resulted in the partial atrophy, the flabby tissue, the itching and 
inflamed members, the moral chilblains, that a specialist in national 
neurasthenia would no doubt have predicted. 



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